Posted on 07/16/2006 4:25:27 PM PDT by Flavius
At least five Palestinians were killed as Israeli armor swept back into the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun Sunday and shelled the south as it continued an offensive launched three weeks ago after militants captured an Israeli soldier.
Tanks, armored vehicles and bulldozers rolled into Beit Hanun before dawn, in the deepest Israeli incursion into the area since Israel began its punishing offensive on June 28 after the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit.
In the latest strike, an unmanned Israeli drone fired a missile at a group of gunmen as they clashed with Israeli troops in Beit Hanun, killing two militants and wounding two, witnesses and medics said.
Three Palestinians from the armed wing of Hamas, which claimed joint responsibility for the attack in which Shalit was snatched, were killed when an Israeli aircraft fired a missile into a group of militants.
In the south, a 75-year-old Palestinian woman was found dead after being wounded by Israeli tank shelling, local medical sources said.
Fatima Jadallah was wounded in the thigh when tanks opened fire on a neighborhood near Gaza's destroyed international airport in Rafah, but she bled to death before the ambulance could arrive because of continued shelling. Another 20 people were wounded, including a woman and a baby, by sporadic gunfire and Israeli shelling in the northern incursion, medical sources said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya denounced the international community for not stepping in to halt the Israeli onslaught as the death toll rose.
On the ground, dozens of Palestinians living on the edges of Beit Hanun were fleeing their homes and taking shelter in UN-run schools in the nearby Jebaliya refugee camp, witnesses said.
Palestinian security sources said troops had advanced at least a kilometer into Beit Hanun. Israeli troops were "inside the entire city," an Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed.
"The Israelis arrived in the night with tanks, infantry and bulldozers which dug up the tarmac," said local resident Jamal Moussa, who fled with his wife and six children.
Initially the family sheltered in a school, before UN workers brought them to a UN-administered building in Jabaliya. http://www.dailystar.com.lb
"When the Israelis die, the world stops, but no one's interested in our fate," said Aisha Mahmoud al-Kafarna. "Last night my son said: 'Mummy, I can't move my arms anymore because I'm frightened.'"
"We haven't been able to wash our children for four days," said Aisha's husband, Adel Massoud Rajab.
Meanwhile, an Israeli drone attacked a car carrying Islamic Jihad militants near Beit Hanun but the gunmen escaped unscathed, security sources said.
"The world is in a very strange state of silence," Haniyya was quoted as saying in an interview with Turkey's Al-Sabah newspaper.
"I am wondering whether the international community has been so silent ever before in the face of such cruelty. I've never heard of or read about the acceptance of such cruelty," Haniyya said.
Haniyya said he kept his hopes high, however, that "humankind will one day hear the voice of its conscience."
Haniyya, whose offices were also bombed, thanked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Turkey's efforts to help defuse the crisis and invited him to visit the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
"If his program allows, I would like to see him in our country next week ... His visit would give the Palestinian people incredible moral strength," he said.
The head of the Jewish state's Shin Bet internal security service, Yuval Diskin, told the weekly Cabinet meeting that he believed the captured soldier was still alive.
Over the weekend, Israeli aircraft attacked a Palestinian government office and a bridge in the central Gaza Strip in separate air strikes, Palestinian officials said. There were no reports of casualties.
The first air strike hit offices of the Economy Ministry, setting the building on fire. Rescue teams rushed to the scene, located near a housing complex inhabited by some 600 people.
Later, an Israeli air strike destroyed a small bridge near the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli Army confirmed both air strikes. - Agencies
That "SCHLOOOOOOP" sound you just heard was every terrorist rectum in Gaza getting an order-of-magnitude increase in its pucker factor.
The deader the jihadists, the better..
Apparently this twit was out of town on 9/11 and missed the festivities.
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